Off-the-Grid Survivalists Now Mainstream on Left and Right
Randomly stop for a minute next time you’re watching a local television news show. See how much of the broadcast is devoted to doomsday topics.
Every night the new norm is reinforced again and again relating to homelessness, hunger, crime, clothing, mental illness, and suicide. Schools can’t afford supplies, and children have neither coats or toys. Crisis centers are apparently doing a booming business.
Not even veterans are exempt, suffering from most of the above signs of social decay. Look for them sleeping under bridges, lined up in soup kitchens, or seeking treatment for PTSD—no longer proud warriors and paragons of discipline and military bearing. The disabled and elderly now represent the armed forces.
Other news is devoted to violent weather and natural disasters—hurricanes, floods, droughts, blizzards, arctic storm fronts, and the like, with implications that global warming may be to blame. Police have been turned into racist thugs—and perhaps causing an increase in robberies, drugs, alcoholism, and other symptoms of an America teetering on the brink.
Churches ironically reinforce a sense that our lives can be snuffed out at any time. We return to the Biblical world where crucifixions were common, poverty widespread, and sinfulness deeply embedded.
Wars and endless waves of immigrant refugees are common in news broadcasts. Demolished cities, terrorist bombings, shootings and riots suggest that the social order is in dire straits. The electric grid is fragile and may stay down for months, even years.
The political left and right agree that the grid may go down without warning. Sustainability is a key word in the liberal canon, reminding us that living off-the-grid was a staple of the 1960s New Left and Mother Earth News.
One recent news article highlights the common denominators between left and right: “Off-grid living means not relying on traditional municipal water supply, natural gas, sewer, electrical power and other utility services.” Those on the left emphasize a global application. One man said that “I always felt I needed to be responsible for me and the impact I make on humans and the planet.”
Off-the-grid preppers and survivalists on the right have their own unique adaptations. Guns and self-defense become much more prominent, along with a wariness of government at every level. A distrust of human nature is especially worrisome, undoubtedly owing to so many Christians in this group, with their concept of Original Sin.
The bestselling 7-novel Survivalist series by A. American, starting with Going Home, explores moral decisions that must be made spontaneously in a fallen world without law enforcement and protection. How can you protect your family and make the right moral choices when governments no longer exist? As one character explains about dealing with ugly attacks, “Just a few months back, the police would have been called. An arrest would have been made and charges filed. The defense and prosecution would be settled on. But things were different now. There was no law to call, nor courts, and now men had to settle things amongst themselves.”
Meanwhile, American society is preparing for bad times. Great Depression and Foxfire-type wisdom is being restudied, while camping and survival skills are becoming more popular than ever.
